Archive for autoimmunity

With the cost of health care, health insurance, deductibles, and copays going through the roof, getting sick has become financially hazardous. Although we can’t fully control our fate, we can sway the odds in our favor so that we need the health care system as little as possible—more than 75 percent of health care costs are devoted to chronic conditions, including heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and arthritis.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) boils down the sorry state of American health and the burden on our health care system into some startling statistics:

Chronic diseases cause 7 in 10 deaths each year in the United States.

Almost half of all adults live with at least one chronic illness, significantly limiting daily activities in some.

The numbers of youth with a chronic health condition has more than tripled since the 1960s.

Less than a quarter of Americans eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

More than one-third of Americans fail to meet minimum recommendations for physical activity.

Many chronic conditions can be prevented or managed through diet and lifestyle changes and functional medicine approaches. It’s better to invest a little up front in preventive medicine approaches than a whole lot later when a health problem has passed the point of no return.

Your diet determines your health. The most profound and fundamental way to avoid needing health care is to pay attention to your diet. Although we are surrounded by convenient, affordable, and tasty fast-food choices, indulging in them regularly paves a path to developing a chronic disease. Focusing on a whole foods, plant-based diet that is free of processed foods and sweets is a good beginning.

Heal your gut. Hippocrates said all disease begins in the gut and modern research is increasingly proving that to be true. Many people unknowingly have inflamed and permeable, or leaky, guts. A leaky gut means undigested foods and pathogens can escape into the bloodstream where they trigger inflammation in the body and brain. Studies have shown links between poor gut health and mood and mental disorders, systemic inflammatory diseases, autoimmune disease, and other chronic disorders.

Identify and manage your autoimmunity.Autoimmunity means the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys body tissue. This is a chaotic inflammatory scenario that often causes troubling or debilitating chronic symptoms and can progressively worsen until it becomes a serious disease. The health care system will not diagnose or treat an autoimmune condition until it has reached the end stages. This is because they do not have a model of treatment for managing autoimmunity, only for suppressing symptoms. Fortunately, today you can run a test that screens for two dozen of the most common autoimmune reactions and learn how to manage your autoimmunity and prevent it from progressing through functional medicine approaches.

Exercise regularly.Exercise has been shown to be a magic bullet when it comes to preventing chronic disease. It’s ideal if you can work in both aerobic and strength training, but just do whatever it takes to move your body regularly.

For more advice on how to avoid needing conventional health care, contact me ninapricelac@gmail.com

Do you have chronic pain, chronic fatigue, or other mysterious symptoms that make you miserable? But does your doctor say your lab tests are fine and you’re perfectly healthy? It could be you have an autoimmune reaction and don’t know it.

People can develop an autoimmune reaction to virtually any tissue, enzyme, or protein in their body. Autoimmunity means the immune system has failed to distinguish between foreign invaders, which it was designed to attack, and body tissue, which it was designed to protect. As a result, the immune system attacks and destroys specific parts of the body.

Symptoms of autoimmunity vary depending on which part of the body is being attacked, but they often include chronic pain, chronic fatigue, brain fog, poor neurological function, chronic inflammation, digestive problems, or poor mood.

A primary characteristic of undiagnosed autoimmunity is chronic pain, chronic fatigue, or other symptoms that seem irresolvable, despite “normal” lab tests and scans. Perhaps you even have been told your health symptoms are due to depression and you need to take antidepressants—this is not uncommon.

Autoimmunity may not be diagnosed as disease

What may be happening is that you have an autoimmune reaction to one or more parts of your body that is causing chronic pain, chronic fatigue, or other symptoms, but the condition is not advanced enough to be diagnosed through conventional testing and qualified as a “disease.” As Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MNeuroSci, author of Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms?and Why Isn’t My Brain Working? explains, people can have symptoms years or even decades before being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

For instance, a person may have trouble controlling blood sugar despite a good diet because of an autoimmune reaction in the pancreas. However, not enough tissue has been destroyed for a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Or a person can have symptoms of multiple sclerosis, but not enough tissue has been destroyed for it to show up on an MRI. Or persistent and severe adrenal fatigue could be the result of autoimmunity in the adrenal glands not advanced enough to be diagnosed as Addison’s disease.

This is not to say you should assume a health problem is autoimmune in nature, but when it is persistent and stubborn, it is a possibility to consider.

You can test for autoimmunity before it progresses to disease

Fortunately, we have autoimmunity testing today that can screen for antibodies against multiple tissues to determine whether an autoimmune reaction is causing chronic pain, chronic fatigue, or other symptoms. Antibodies are proteins that tag a foreign compound for the immune system to destroy and remove. When you produce higher than normal levels of antibodies to certain parts of the body (it’s normal for old and dying cells to be tagged for removal), this means you are having an autoimmune reaction against that tissue or enzyme.

When a person presents with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, or other persistent symptoms, screening for an autoimmune reaction can help us determine whether that plays a role in symptoms. If so, we then know we can work on balancing an overzealous and improperly functioning immune system. Also, if your test shows an autoimmune reaction but you have no symptoms, you now know that proper diet and lifestyle choices will help prevent the progression of autoimmunity.

Today we have many scientifically proven strategies to tame autoimmunity, improve function, and increase your well being. These include an autoimmune diet and nutritional compounds to balance the immune system and quench inflammation.

Ask me how I can help you get to the bottom of mysterious conditions, such as chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and other symptoms.

Despite what your doctor may have told you, you are not making up your chronic symptoms or simply in need of antidepressants.